STAR TREK Image from Axanar Indiegogo campaign’s pitch video.
Axanar Indiegogo Details
Table of Contents
Main article: Crowdfunding Platforms
See also: Prelude Kickstarter Details and Axanar Kickstarter Details
This is an analysis of the publicly available information about Axanar’s Indiegogo campaign, launched in July 2015, and concluded in January 2016 after the filing of a copyright infringement lawsuit against Axanar Productions and executive producer Alec Peters by CBS and Paramount Pictures.
This third crowdfunding effort by Axanar had now moved to Kickstarter’s rival, Indiegogo, which, by Peters’ account, had courted Axanar with a significant financial incentive. The ambition of a $1.32 million goal was matched by an expansion of the commercial scope of Axanar Productions beyond just the production of Axanar.
About the Indiegogo Data
The campaign ended with a total $574,434 raised from 7,660 donors. However, 1,102 people appeared to donate $69,789 without selecting perks, so the amount each contributed was not publicly disclosed. Each average undisclosed donation, however, is about $63.
This is one in a series of AxaMonitor articles examining Axanar’s crowdfunding efforts, its spending, its goals and how it has reported on those activities. The entire series is listed here.
Donations Divvied Up
ACCOUNTABILITY graphic from Axanar’s 2015 Indiegogo campaign page.
Consequently, the analysis below is based only on the total raised from donors who did choose perks ($504,645).1)
The following figures demonstrate:
- Donors of small amounts (under $100) made up more than three-fourths of the total number of those who supported Axanar (Figure 1).
- However, those small donations only made up 40 percent of the total dollars raised (Figure 2).
- Just a sliver of donors (25, or 0.4 percent) made contributions of more than $1,000 (Figure 1). In fact, the combined donations of just seven raised $50,000 — 10 percent of what was raised from perk-picking contributors.
- Those 25 donors contributed almost one-fifth of the dollars raised (Figure 2).
- Meanwhile, mid-level donors (between $100-$600) were only a quarter of those who supported the campaign (Figure 1), but made up 43 percent of the total dollars raised (Figure 2).
Click on image to view full size.
Distribution of Donors
The following chart displays the number of donors distributed across the 29 funded levels offered by the campaign.
Top 5 Perks
Based on the data in Figure 3 below, the Top 5 perks selected by donors were:
| Amount | Reward | No. of Donors | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | $25 | Download of Axanar | 2,198 |
| 2. | $75 | Axanar Blu-ray | 1,030 |
| 3. | $150 | Axanar Deluxe Blu-ray | 875 |
| 4. | $35 | Starfleet Fourth Fleet patch | 414 |
| 5. | $10 | Backers page, access to Donors’ Store | 475 |
| Top 5 perks raised $281,920 (56 percent of total) from 4,915 donors (75 percent of total) | |||
Figure 3
Click on image to view full size.
High-End Perks
These are the rewards offered to the highest-paying contributors:
| Amount | Reward | No. of Donors |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000 | Associate producer on set | 3 |
| $5,000 | Associate producer upgrade | 1 |
| $5,000 | Extra in Axanar | 3 |
| $4,000 | Ultimate collectors pack | 1 |
| $2,500 | Production assistant for 1 week | 6 |
| These 14 people contributed $69,000 (14 percent of the total) | ||
Change in Character
Main article: Axanar Indiegogo Details
See also: Fan Films: Breaking the Unwritten Rules and Defining Profit
The move from Kickstarter to Indiegogo in 2015 marked not only a change in platform but a significant increase in producer Alec Peters’ estimate of Axanar‘s cost as well as plans for Ares Studios, an effort for commercial production of other science fiction properties and rental of the production facilities paid for with donor money.
Move to Indiegogo
Kickstarter, where Axanar had raised $739,642 — the most of any fan film — and Indiegogo operate on very similar business models: Run a time-limited campaign, if you meet your goal you get all the money pledged, minus a percentage to the crowdfunding platform and transaction fees to the company who handle payments. But Indiegogo offered several advantages to Axanar over Kickstarter.
Keeping All Pledges
Kickstarter operates on an “all or nothing” basis — campaigns that fail to meet their goals lose all the money that’s been pledged to them. Indiegogo allows campaigns that don’t meet their fiscal goals to keep everything that’s been pledged but with the platform taking a larger percentage of the proceeds.
Indiegogo's Flexibility
While both platforms offer maximum campaign lengths of 60 days2) 3), Indiegogo offers an “In Demand” category for select projects, allowing them to raise money indefinitely, and the platform offered Axanar that designation.
[Indiegogo] love Axanar and really want our business and so have come with an aggressive offer to woo us away from Kickstarter.4)
Also on the table was:
- A $35,000 savings in fees if Axanar exceeded $1 million.
- Accepting both credit cards and PayPal. Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments for financial transactions.
Peters was also persuaded by the success of the year’s two biggest film projects, Super Troopers II, which raised $4.5 million, and Con Man, which raised $3.2 million — both on Indiegogo.5)
He also announced his intention to run at least four more crowdfunding campaigns and wanted to compare his successes between the two platforms:
'Axanar's' Cost Rises
See also: Ambition vs. Achievement
With each successive (and successful) crowdfunding campaign, the cost to produce Axanar continued to increase, in large measure because of the decision to build its own commercial studio. Studio expenses alone consumed 38 percent of the proceeds from the second Kickstarter campaign.7)
“This decision changed Axanar dramatically,” Peters explained. “In the end, it was agreed that more time and more money would equal greater quality.”8)
ARES DIGITAL is a for-profit company created by Axanar Productions with co-producer Terry McIntosh to process and ship merchandise (known as “perks”) to donors of any project’s Kickstarter, Indiegogo and private donation campaigns.
Commercial Activities
See also: Merchandise
Building his own studio, which he named Ares Studios, also presented Peters with an economic opportunity. He would now have a permanent facility to produce not only more “independent Star Trek productions” but to earn income from renting out the facility and from Ares’ own original films, which would be freed from the intellectual property restrictions of fan films.9)
Axanar is not just an independent Star Trek film; it is the beginning of a whole new way that fans can get the content they want, by funding it themselves. Why dump hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on 400 cable channels, when what you really want is a few good sci-fi shows? Hollywood is changing. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and other providers are redefining content delivery, and Axanar Productions/Ares Studios hopes to be part of that movement.10)
In March 2016, Peters announced the Ares Studios assets were to be transferred to a secret group of investors for up to $400,000 that would go into the production of Axanar. At the time, and in a video interview with TrekZONE, Peters refused to say whether he was part of that investment group.
Even so, by May 2016 Peters felt he was sufficiently empowered to offer a 2 percent stake in the studio to departed chief technologist Terry McIntosh in exchange for the Ares Digital fulfillment software.
The crowdfunding campaigns had required Axanar to set up a full-fledged merchandising and fulfillment operation featuring a full line of Star Trek-based apparel, five blends of coffee, posters, artwork, patches, models and books in a Donors’ Store, which Peters realized presented a potential revenue stream he launched with co-producer McIntosh called Ares Digital.11)
However, Ares Digital utterly failed to enable Axanar to deliver promised perks to its donors, forcing the production to start its fulfillment efforts from scratch. 
Source Data
Download the source documents for the crowdfunding series of articles. The data was assembled into spreadsheets from publicly accessible information made available by the crowdfunding platforms and/or the Axanar Annual Report. Click on the citation number to access the downloadable spreadsheets. 12)
Submit Findings
Readers who make interesting findings by sorting the crowdfunding and financial data on their own are invited to submit them to AxaMonitor. Please use the Feedback page to submit new information. Thank you!
Keywords
1)
Axanar Indiegogo campaign page, retrieved 3/1/16.
2)
Kickstarter Creator FAQs, retrieved 3/6/16.
3)
Indiegogo Support: Choose Launch Date & Deadline, retrieved 3/6/16.
7)
AxaMonitor Annual Report analysis, "Axanar Spending by Category".
8)
Axanar Annual Report 2015, Revised, p. 12, 12/15/15.
10)
Axanar Indiegogo campaign, retrieved 3/6/16.
12)
Download Excel spreadsheet with data from Axanar crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Also, the Axanar Financials spreadsheet summarizes data from the Axanar Annual Report, 2015, Revised, and the data used to generate charts in the Ambition vs. Achievement article.